


Nothing so Constant as Change

by Jaelijn



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coda, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon, Post-Gauda Prime, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 20:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18301016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaelijn/pseuds/Jaelijn
Summary: Post-Gauda Prime. The Federation has fallen, and Kerr Avon is president. Vila doesn’t want anything to do with it – and least of all with Avon – and is happy enough staying out of the way and doing some honest thieving. But a late night call changes everything.





	Nothing so Constant as Change

**Author's Note:**

> This one is... a little off the beaten track. I don't think I've encountered quite this idea elsewhere (though I could be wrong), and once you've read it you probably won't be surprised when I say that I have literally dreamed up this premise. But anything else I could say would be a spoiler, so without further ado, please enjoy!
> 
> Note re: the warning: No death happens "on screen", but not only is this PGP to begin with, the death is plot-relevant and happens during the fic, though it takes up little space in the story plot as such. It's not quite a terminal illness, but for the purpose of a warning, this is probably the closest comparison I can offer you. It is not Vila, if that helps.

The call in the middle of the night was already unusual, and a supressed caller ID spelled trouble – but with Vila’s business being what it was, he couldn’t exactly blame his clients for wanting a little privacy. But when he took the call and the caller’s face coalesced into one he knew only too well, Vila’s hand shot to the button that would end the call. “Hell no!”

Only then Avon said the only thing that would make Vila stop. “Please!”

Vila’s finger hovered over the button and he gazed at Avon in undisguised hostility. “I told you, no calls, no visit, no contact. I don’t want to have anything to do with you, Avon! Bad enough that I have to see your face in the news daily. Enjoying the presidency, are you?”

Avon had always been a strange one, had always responded to hostility with deprecating, arrogant humour. The expression on his face now was new. If he had been anyone else, Vila would have interpreted it as hurt. “It will delight you, then,” he said, “that I have stepped down, effective immediately.”

Vila covered his surprise by sneering. “You called to tell me that? I’d have seen it on the news tomorrow.”

“No doubt. But I didn’t call for myself. There is… a matter which I would entrust to no one else.”

Vila tentatively moved his hand back into his lap. “You called to talk business?”

“As you like. _I have a commission_ , is, I think, the proper phrase?”

“Yes,” Vila replied stiffly. “Well, what is it?”

Avon glanced away from the camera, typing something. “I’m sending you a file with the details, and a down payment – enough, I should think, to ensure your services despite… personal animosity.”

“And whose fault is that?” Vila snapped.

Avon looked up, meeting his gaze – but of course they were both only looking at a screen. Avon must feel safe that way. “Vila…”

“You tried to kill me! You shot Blake! We nearly _all_ died that day!”

“You should find the payment very generous. I have included a bonus for any expenses,” Avon said, his voice cutting and cold. “And you will receive the same again once you complete the commission, if you decide to take it on. I won’t ask for a refund, if you don’t, but I wish you would.” His voice softened a little. “It shouldn’t be in anyone else’s hands.”

“I’ll look at it. How do I let you know my decision?”

“You will find all you need in the file.”

“What is it, then? A retrieval? A planting?”

“Neither – you will understand when you get there. You won’t need to speak to or see me again, if that helps. Don’t worry, Vila – there is no danger except the automated security.”

“Right,” Vila said, not quite believing him. “No guarantees, Avon! If I don’t like it, I won’t go. I’m beyond doing _you_ any favours.”

Avon nodded. “I know. Goodbye, Vila.”

He ended the call, leaving Vila to stare at the file he had received. He ran every check on it that he knew, then, reluctantly, opened it. There was a number where he could leave a message on whether or not he had accepted the commission, a file with coordinates for some no-name planet, a plan of a planetary station with the target marked, and a note of the security systems. The lock, apparently, was custom-made, which piqued Vila’s professional interest. However, the coordinates were half a universe away, and Vila didn’t particularly fancy the journey on Avon’s behalf – until, that was, he looked, properly looked at the down payment.

He immediately tried to call Avon back, his hands shaking, but without Caller ID there was no way to reconnect them, and the number he had been given was for text messages only. Vila couldn’t afford going through the official channels. “Dammit, Avon, have you lost your mind?”  
The down payment was a fortune. More money than Vila had ever owned, and it was only _half_ of what he was set to receive? It had to be Avon’s entire wealth, and Vila couldn’t comprehend why _Avon_ of all people would sink all his money into paying off a professional thief, and not even for the purpose of fetching something of equal value back to him. Vila couldn’t shake the feeling that it was somehow personal, somehow important.

He slept on it for a night, determined not to make a choice while he was barely half awake. The morning arrived to Avon’s resignation all over the viscasts. Apparently, Avon had also vanished from the public eye, unavailable for interviews. Vila watched it over breakfast, nibbling his lip in worry despite himself, the figure of the down payment, already on his accounts, staring at him from the coms screen.

He set the course as soon as he had swallowed the last bite.

 

There was no real reason to fully trust the information Avon had given him – after all, the Avon Vila knew might have paid him such exorbitant sums in the knowledge that Vila wouldn’t be around much longer to enjoy it – though Avon had always been peculiarly honest about money. At any rate, there was no reason to trust the details, and Vila didn’t. He approached the station with heightened caution, double-checking every security device, though he found nothing of particular value – smallish self-sustaining living quarters, a hideaway. Empty.

The locked section was just where Avon had said it was. Vila spend a long time on the lock, scanning the door for booby traps thrice over, checking all details on lock, the door, the wall.

He found nothing he hadn’t been told about.

Uneasy, Vila gripped the little gun that he carried these days – he hated it, but it was a necessity – and opened the door.

More living quarters, though these had been locked from the outside. A prison, a cell – or perhaps a golden cage. If Vila hadn’t seen Servalan die with his own eyes he might have thought Avon had kept her as a pet. He couldn’t see the occupant, as yet, if there was one.

Vila edged his way carefully inside, making sure that he could open the door just as easily from inside as out. He must have made _some_ noise, for a moment later there was an indistinct call from one of the other rooms and then a man appeared at the door.

“The bastard!” was the first thing past Vila’s lips, an explosion of rage.

It was _Blake_. Blake whom he had believed dead for decades. Blake whom he had seen Avon gun down. Blake whom they had mourned and missed and who deserved better than to be _Avon_ ’s prisoner, after all this!

“Vila,” Blake said evenly, quite evidently totally surprised.

“You’re alive! We thought you were dead! All these years, Avon lied and told us you were dead and all the time he was keeping you here! Why’d you let him do it, Blake? He wasn’t quite sane, not when it came to you, you know!”

“Vila,” Blake said again, and Vila swore, letting his gun waver off target.

“What did he do to you? I’m getting you out of here – he sent me, you know, must be some kind of twisted joke…”

“Vila!” Blake snapped with a sharp jerk of his head that silenced Vila instantly. “It’s good to see you.”

Vila made his way to a nearby chair. “Mind if I sit down? You don’t, do you? Oh, good. My nerves aren’t what they used to be. Why did you never tell us you were _alive_ , Blake? We missed you – I missed you; can’t say that Avon has, since he knew, didn’t he? That’s who you were expecting to walk through that door. What was he doing? Playing gaoler? No wonder he resigned before he sent me here…”

“He resigned?” Blake asked and stepped up to Vila, catching his arm. “What do you mean?”

“He stepped down as president. It’s all over the news; don’t you even have news? Hell, _Blake_.”

Blake glanced away. “It must be getting worse.” He sounded almost worried.

“Worse? Blake, the man trapped you here for years! How long has this been going on, anyway; how can you be worried for him…”

“Vila!” Again, Blake’s voice was cutting, sharper than Vila remembered it being. “Sit down and listen. You have no idea what you’re talking about, as usual.”

“Now you sound like him. Was he the only contact you had? Must have rubbed off on you…”

For some reason, Blake seemed to find that hilarious, his mouth spreading in a grin that was totally unlike Blake’s. Vila clutched at his gun, suddenly deeply uneasy.

“In a manner of speaking, Vila,” he said. “You needn’t shoot me, you know. Though perhaps we need to make sure that your anger at… Avon is directed at the president, before we go on.”

“The _former_ president. There are no other Avons? Are there?”

“Only one, as far as I’m aware. Though he never was president.”

Vila stared at Blake’s face, Blake’s eyes, Blake’s hand, spread in a gesture that wasn’t Blake’s, in a body that wasn’t sitting like Blake, at a face that didn’t move and shift like Blake’s. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“It has had its humorous moments, but I can’t say that it has been a particular funny experience overall.”

“You cannot expect me to believe you’re Avon!”

“Very well, some proof, then. Blake never found out about our little trip down to Freedom City – I never got around to doing something about that theory of stabilised atomic implosion.”

“No way, Avon will have told you that. You have to do better.”

“Very well.” The man in Blake’s body stood, pacing away a few steps. “Since the only other person who ever saw it is dead, perhaps this will convince you. When I asked you to set up the cave where I intended to execute Shrinker, I gave you an image file. It was… the only image of Anna that I still had. I would _never_ have told Blake any of that.”

If the fact or the sound of pain in his voice hadn’t convinced Vila, the way he spoke about Blake did. Either Blake was putting a lot of effort into making Vila think that he was Avon – or _this_ was Avon, and the Avon Vila had watched being president wasn’t – or at least was a different Avon. “All right,” Vila said. “How?”

“Terminal. Something the Federation did when they had us both; an experimental development of the brain print technology. Apparently it is easier to pretend being me, so Blake went ahead in my body. We only realised that… well, either my body or his mind were having an adverse reaction to the swap. Perhaps my brain and his mind simply weren’t compatible. He… didn’t deal well with stress, overbalanced in trying to play me convincingly. By then it was too late. We had to see it through.”

“Since Terminal?”

“Yes.” Avon nodded, sitting back down. “We talked about telling you, but with Cally dead… We thought it might be safer if no one knew; if I were free to work in the background.”

“How did you get off Terminal?”

“Stowaway,” Avon grinned. “Blake dropped me off here the first chance he had – probably you don’t remember ever coming by the planet.”

“And the lock?”

Avon’s gaze travelled to the door. “I insisted. A safety measure against discovery, of course, and we also didn’t know whether I might not have a similar bad reaction. After… Malodaar, Blake finally agreed to put it in.”

“He tried to kill me!”

“Yes, I know.”

“The Blake I knew never would have!”

“The Blake you knew is gone! I told you, something went wrong. Perhaps it was a side effect of Blake’s previous conditioning. Perhaps what he thought would be like me filled the gaps too well, turning him into someone else. I don’t know, Vila.”

“And yet you trusted him with your life?”

“Hardly. _I_ control this complex. I might not be able to open the door, but if Blake had ever come here with a weapon he would have been turned to dust, and he knew it. I expect you turned everything off. I shall have to reactivate it.” He glanced pensively towards the door he had come through – perhaps there was some sort of workroom down that way.

Vila came to his feet, still not quite believing it. “And Gauda Prime? I saw him shoot _Blake_!”

“A clone Servalan made a long time ago. An unfortunate victim – afterwards, Blake came to his senses. Presumably, meeting himself while knowing it wasn’t _me_ was a bit of a shock.” Avon smiled crookedly, humourlessly. “It was only when we thought that he might be stabilising that he went for the presidency.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Avon laughed. “I’m not a politician, nor particularly good at playing Blake. I wanted no part in it. Besides, the universe had already decided that Blake was dead.”

“So you stayed in your golden cage and let Blake be the bastard for you?”

“There was no way to reverse the swap. Here, I was _safe_ , and wealthy enough, and the Federation would never bother me here, nor did the rebellion. I could be myself, instead of spending my life pretending to be Blake, which was the last thing I wanted to do – one year of it was quite enough. I have all the research I could possibly want to do, and food for a hundred years. It’s what I wanted.”

“Without ever seeing anything else? All on your own?” To Vila, that kind of loneliness would have been hell, despite the fact that he let a rather isolated existence himself these days. Avon didn’t _sound_ like he had enjoyed it, precisely – Vila thought that perhaps he even sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as Vila – but being in Blake’s body hadn’t made Avon any easier to read.

“I had some company,” Avon was saying. “Remember that circuit board you stole from Gambit? Blake brought it to me.” Avon smiled, and for the first time it looked like one of Blake’s genuine smiles.

“A computer. That’s nice,” Vila commented, not meaning it. “I think A – Blake meant for me to let you out.”

“Possibly.” Avon’s gaze skirted away from him, focussing on empty air in thought in the way Vila remembered so well from the _Liberator_. He hadn’t even realised he’d seen it less, after Terminal. “It must mean that he is getting worse. Perhaps he really is dying now.”

“Dying!”

“I thought there was no love lost between the two of you?”

“Yes, but he was Blake!”

“Ah, of course. Easier to hate _me_ , was it?” Avon said it with a crooked grin, belying any hurt that might have lain behind the words. He didn’t look back at Vila.

“That’s not what I meant! No wonder he stopped making sense to me! He spent nearly all his money to get me here – all the time I was wondering what could possibly make you do that. Blake never had an eye for money.” Vila stared at the empty table, mentally rewriting the last long years, every single of Avon – _Blake_ ’s actions. “You haven’t a drink by chance?”

“Of course. Come with me; the living room is more comfortable than this.”

Avon rose smoothly to his – Blake’s – feet and led the way out the doorway Avon had first come through. It took them into a long corridor, with closed doors on either side and another open doorway at the end, from which Vila could see daylight. Avon stepped into the room first, letting Vila take in the glass dome and spectacular view. The base was largely underground, but the living room was set into a cliff face and Vila could see far into the distance, the horizon stretching out. The planet wasn’t the most appealing Vila had ever been to, but framed as it was here, the red and gold desert with its strange rock shapes, little patches of greenery and endlessness was breath-taking.

Avon was grinning. “Well? Not so bad, after all, is it?”

“It’s a lovely view, Avon.”

Avon waved him into an armchair and pressed a flute with something alcoholic into his hand, settling down opposite with the same for himself.

Vila sniffed at it and took a sip. “Good, this.”

“Only the best.” Avon leant back, crossing his legs. It was strange to see him move so very like Avon, in this body that wasn’t – though now that Vila knew, the clothes Avon wore didn’t strike him as very Blakean. Gone were the flowing sleeves and open buttons, gone the vests and shirts without ornaments. Avon’s clothes didn’t look exactly like the ones he used to wear on the _Liberator_ – better cut and more expensive, for one – but they were definitely akin to some of the more formal things Avon had had then. Besides, with Avon in this body, it seemed to have changed a little, too. Neither Avon nor Blake had ever been highly muscular, but with Avon piloting the body, it had lost a little of the excess weight that Blake didn’t seem to be able to be rid of – Cally had once claimed it was because stress didn’t make him lose weight. Vila hadn’t been able to even begin imagining how that worked.

“Gambit,” Avon said suddenly, “why don’t you say hello to Vila? You owe him, after all.”

“Hello, Vila,” came the disembodied voice of the computer that Vila remembered well, even after all the years. “Would you like to play a game?”

“Not now, I think,” Avon said before Vila could get a word in. He took a slow sip from his own glass. “At any rate, I’m glad Blake at least paid you for the wasted journey.”

“Wasted journey?”

“I’m not leaving here, Vila.”

“But you can’t just…”

“Why not. You could join me, you know. You have a ship; there is a landing pad for it, as you have doubtlessly discovered. No one would ever find you here. You can continue to run your business as you like, though you wouldn’t have to. I’m sure what lasts me a hundred years will suffice for both of us for the rest of our lives.”

“But with the president gone, the universe will be in turmoil!”

“So what? ‘Blake’ should waltz in and fix things? Not in a million years, Vila.”

“What’s the catch?”

“There’s no catch.” Avon drank from his glass again, his gaze directed at the ceiling with his head tilted back against the chair. “Think about it. Explore the base before you go.”

“Why would _you_ share?”

That got him one of those quicksilver grins that Vila remembered so well, on a different face. “Perhaps I _have_ been lonely.”

“I don’t believe that! But, seriously, Avon, what about Blake?”

“What about him.”

“You said he might be dying! In your body! He was… he used to be…”

“A friend?” Avon paused for a moment. “Perhaps, but he wouldn’t want either of us there, he made that clear enough. We talked about it, Vila.”

“But if he’s dead–”

“It’s not reversible. We’re stuck like this. I have a digital alias or two, and Blake got what he always wanted.”

“What if he isn’t? Dead, I mean.”

Avon sat up a little, some of the relaxation fading from his posture. “Gambit!”

“Yes?”

“Check the news, would you – and references to _Avon, Kerr, president_.”

“Those search parameters are under a security lock, Avon.”

Avon didn’t seem surprised. “Yes, I know. Avon-7-Delta-2546. A summary only, Gambit.”

“After his resignation, President Avon was reported missing. His private shuttle was later discovered on a collision course with the sun, where it was lost.”

Avon nodded and looked back at Vila. “There, you see. The rumours will start soon, that he’s still alive, and he will become a legend, after all. That it isn’t under his own name will be of little consequence to Blake now.”

“Suicide?” Vila asked, appalled, but Avon shook his head.

“A pre-programmed flight path. Knowing Blake, he waited until the last minute. We can’t allow anyone to examine either one of us, or our remains. There are… traces of what the Federation did. Scars, if you will. Did he seem stable to you when you spoke to him?”

“Well, no, not particularly. Fairly emotional, I thought, though he was extra-nasty to cover it. He did say _please_ and almost made me believe that he cared for whatever he was making me unlock.”

“Well, I suppose I should be flattered.”

“He sounded like Blake, now that I’m thinking about it.” Vila emptied his glass in one last swallow. “Here’s to Blake.”

Avon nodded, pensive for a moment, and lifted his own glass. “Yes. Well, I think there have been enough political changes that the universe will survive his absence. If anything like the Federation should return, I have a trick or two up my sleeve.”

“You really don’t want to leave, do you? Not even to see Earth again? Or the new Freedom City, or the Castebaran Nebula?”

“No, thank you. If Cally had still been alive, I would have invited her to visit, but I have had enough of space adventures. Have a look around, Vila. You might find it not such a bad place to return to after one of your own trips.”

Vila stared at his empty glass, waiting. Waiting for the catch to rear its head, and for the weird day to get even weirder – or even for waking up. None of it happened. Avon merely swung his legs up onto a footstool and looked out at the view, eyes idly tracking a bird of prey shooting past the cliff face, the glass held loosely in his hand.

“Right.” Vila set his own flute down on a table and went for a wander around the room, to give himself time – to think, to sort out his emotions about Blake, about Avon. The Avon before they’d lost the _Liberator_ had been his friend. Yes, the stress was getting to him, and having to fill Blake’s shoes – this Avon was literally filling them, but he seemed entirely at ease. The Avon _after_ they had lost the _Liberator_ … Blake. Vila had thought that it was just the stress, getting worse, Cally’s death, the _Liberator_ gone. He’d tried to do what he could to help, until Malodaar and that cursed shuttle flight. That had been the end of their friendship, and Vila had cut off all contact as soon as he’d had the chance. That had been Blake – Blake, in a foreign body, Blake struggling with side effects and having to be Avon in front of three people he never knew, Blake hiding away the real Avon and his body while worrying about all of them. That Blake could have used a friend, a confidant, but Vila had had no idea what he needed – he had been trying to give Blake what Avon might have needed. Of course it hadn’t worked. He only hoped that Blake hadn’t held any grudges.

“He recorded a message, you know,” Avon said, in Blake’s voice, startling Vila from his unseeing contemplation of the bookcase – real books, even if they probably were synthesised rather than antiques. “After that first meltdown. Oh, don’t look surprised. He was Blake. He thought he might be dying. Of course he did.”

“For me?”

“There is nobody else.” Avon set down his glass by Vila’s on the table. “You’ll find an unused bedroom down the other corridor, opposite mine. Blake used it once or twice, while he was here, but it can be yours if you want. I’ll have Gambit reroute the message there – whenever you’re ready.”

“Thanks.”

Mellower, that’s what he was, this Avon. Not just relaxed and content, there was something else – perhaps something of Blake had rubbed off on him, after all, just as something of Avon had rubbed off on Blake. Only Blake’s side of the deal had been volatile. Poor Blake. But Avon was right – in the end, Blake had gotten what he wanted, had been able to steer and shape it. Had seen the Federation crumble and had rebuilt an alliance of federated planets, had reshaped government on Earth. As a politician, he had been respected, if not loved, though some had hero-worshipped him. It had driven Vila up the wall that the man who had killed Blake, if in misunderstanding, and who had tried to kill Vila, if for survival, had become the most powerful man in the known universe, but “Avon’s” government had been brutally just, even for the lower grades – even, in a different sense, for the higher grades. The fact that Vila had had no place in that society had more to do with his chosen profession than with its structure – though “Avon” had known and never done anything against him, which had been something, at least.

Vila wondered how much of the scientific expertise over the years had really come from the _real_ Avon, unremarked-upon, uncredited, which was remarkable in its own way. He wondered what Avon had been up to, what he’d done with those digital aliases, and what he and Gambit might be able to do for Vila, if he stayed, if he made this place his first stable base of operation in years… But first, he would have to figure out whether he wanted to.

Vila’d listen to what Blake had to say and drink a toast to his name – one of many, over the years, but the first one that would be real. And then, he would decide.

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking of continuing this for a long time, at least to the point where Vila actually decides, but over time I have come to like the open ending to this silly little idea. I hope you won't find it too frustrating to know that no continuation might ever be forthcoming. 
> 
> Also, for the record, I never considered Avon in S4 "crazy" (and have written [meta on why](https://castielslight.tumblr.com/post/165800601101/why-i-dont-think-avon-is-crazy-yes-not-even), too), so I never really understood the need for finding "explanations" for his actions - in fact, I think the tragedy of B7 is enhanced by the fact that there is _no_ such excuse as diminishing capacity for judgement (at least up until the GP showdown). But I still enjoyed running with this out-there premise for a bit. :P


End file.
